Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Chronological Culture Change And Organization In The Middle Ohio Valley

圣路易斯华盛顿大学的博士候选人爱德华亨利将调查北美东部的古代几何陶制纪念碑。本研究将探讨仪式行动背景下的集体劳动努力，它们在社会整合中的作用，以及它们对意识形态参与的反映。虽然研究的重点是过去，但它也有可能为现在提供信息。农民和社区集中劳动是今天仍然用来建立和维持社会秩序的因素。学者们指出，参与仪式性的劳动活动可以帮助建立和巩固社会纽带，复制意识形态，并加强社会政治和经济议程。利用考古学来评估古代小规模社会的仪式土纪念碑的建设提供了一个背景下，探索社会复杂性的物质指标，它是如何出现的，并组织。一个更好的技术和时间顺序的理解，如何，以及如何快速，土制纪念碑是由阿德纳和霍普韦尔（公元前500-公元600年）社会的北美东部。这些团体似乎是移动的，没有国家式的领导等级。尽管如此，这些人还是组织起来，建造了几何形状复杂的圈地遗址、大型土丘，并维持着一个大陆性的异国商品交换网络。通过考察这些仪式性的景观改造活动是如何、以多快的速度在俄亥俄州河谷蔓延的，我们可以了解到社会的复杂性，即大规模的劳动壮举是在一个以严格的等级制度为基础的社会政治结构之外进行的。亨利先生将考察俄亥俄州河谷中部肯塔基州中部的蓝草地区是如何建造沟渠和堤岸几何围栏的。该地区被认为是古代北美东部的Adena和Hopewell社会的中心地带。考察这些位于肯塔基州的宗教仪式遗址，可以看到俄亥俄州河以南的景象，在那里，人们对圈地建筑的时间顺序的理解需要进一步完善。更好地了解围栏的建造、使用和废弃的历史将有助于表明与Adena和Hopewell的出现相关的社会变化有多快（例如，狩猎和园艺经济，陶瓷技术，新的动物肖像）传播。此外，这项工作将显示如何在整个地区采用特定的仪式惯例。通过挖掘横跨肯塔基州中部的八个土制围栏的多个区域，亨利将看到在每个遗址的建设过程中景观是如何被改变的，并确定仪式劳动的传统是否存在差异。他将检查建筑轮廓的排水沟和沟渠与沟渠和开放的大（约。4x 4米）的挖掘块，以探索在其边界内进行的活动。这个强大的数据集将用于研究古代北美东部社会复杂性的组织和传播。本研究的历史部分将与现代美洲印第安人的背景有关。这项研究将为攻读人类学和考古学学位的学生提供专门的考古培训。

Edward Henry, PhD Candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, will investigate ancient geometric earthen monuments in Eastern North America. This research will explore collective labor efforts within contexts of ritual action, their role in social integration, and their reflection of ideological participation. While the research focuses on the past it also has the potential to inform on the present. Ritual and community focused labor are factors which today still serve to establish and maintain social order. Scholars have noted that participatory engagement in ritualistic labor events can help create and solidify social bonds, reproduce ideologies, and reinforce sociopolitical and economic agendas. Using archaeology to assess the construction of ceremonial earthen monuments by ancient small-scale societies provides a context to explore the material indicators for social complexity, how it emerges, and is organized. A better technological and chronological understanding of how, and how quickly, earthen monuments are built by Adena and Hopewell (500 BCE-600 CE) societies of Eastern North America. These groups are seemingly mobile and do not have a state-like leadership hierarchy. Nevertheless, these people organized to build geometrically complex enclosure sites, large burial mounds, and maintain a continental exchange network in exotic goods. Examining how, how quickly, these practices of ritual landscape modification spread across the Ohio River Valley provides one understanding of emergent social complexity where massive labor feats were conducted outside a sociopolitical structure grounded in a rigid hierarchy.Mr. Henry will examine how ditch-and-embankment geometric enclosures were built across the Bluegrass Region of Central Kentucky in the Middle Ohio Valley. This region is considered the heartland of Adena and Hopewell societies in ancient Eastern North America. Examining these ritual sites in Kentucky provides a view south of the Ohio River, where chronological understandings of enclosure construction needs refinement. A better historical understanding of enclosure construction, use, and abandonment will help indicate how quickly social changes associated with the emergence of Adena and Hopewell (e.g., a hunting and horticultural economy, ceramic technology, new animalistic iconography) spread. In addition, this work will show how particular ritual practices were adopted across the region. By excavating multiple areas of eight earthen enclosures across Central Kentucky, Henry will see how the landscape was modified during each sites construction and determine if differences exist in traditions of ritual labor. He will examine the construction profiles of embankments and ditches with trenches and open large (ca. 4 x 4 meter) excavation blocks inside enclosures to explore the activities carried out within their boundaries. This robust dataset will be used to examine the organization and spread of social complexity in ancient Eastern North America. The historical component of this research will be relevant to the background of modern American Indians. This research will provide specialized archaeological training to students pursuing degrees in anthropology and archaeology.